Evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory

The experiments were conducted to investigate the development of evaluative and taxonomic encoding in children's memory. The task used was a modification of the Wickens short-term memory task in which subjects' recall of words is tested following a distraction task. The first experiment found that 11-year-old children, but not 8-year-old children, encoded words using the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential. In the second experiment, both 7- and 11-year-olds demonstrated the ability to encode words according to taxonomic categories. These findings were related to other recent work on the development of encoding in memory.     

A factorial investigation of career salience

A series of career salience items were factor analyzed and related to several indices of occupational choice behavior. Three factors emerged from the factor analysis: (1) the relative priority of a career; (2) general attitudes toward work; and (3) career advancement and planning. Factor 2 was significantly related to the choice of a congruent occupation for males and to the choice of an “ideal” occupation for males and females. Factor 2 was also most highly related to self-esteem for both sexes.     

Developmental differences in frequency judgments of words and pictures

Children in kindergarten, third, and fifth grades were presented a list of either pictures or words (with items presented for varying numbers of times on the study trial). In both picture and word conditions, half of the Ss estimated how many times each item had been presented (absolute judgments) and the other half judged which of two items had occurred more often on the study trial (relative judgments). The primary finding was that while frequency judgment performance improved with age for both pictures and words, there was relatively greater improvement for pictures (i.e., the picture-word difference increased with age). These results lend strong support to the frequency theory of discrimination learning and, in particular, may be useful in accounting for effects associated with age and with age by stimulus mode interactions.     

Cognitions related to anxiety: a pilot study of treatment

In general, where anxiety appears to have a specific external focus, such as the situations which are avoided by phobic patients, treatment involving systematic exposure to those situations seems to be effective. This is less appropriate, or even impossible, where anxiety is not dependent on any external circumstance, but is described by the patient as occurring at any time or place, either chronically over long periods, or acutely in the form of ‘panic attacks’. These patients with ‘generalised’ anxiety often describe internal cues for anxiety either in the form of thoughts (e.g. worry over a current problem) or somatic (e.g. chest sensations interpreted as possible heart disease). Beck et al. (1974) has suggested that on interview, all patients diagnosed as suffering from diffuse or generalised anxiety can report specific ideas or other cognitive cues which are associated with anxiety. These usually concern possible traumatic events, such as illness and death, or social rejection. Clearly Beck has in mind the possibility that these cognitions have the effect of inducing anxiety, although even if the validity of the subjective reports were to be accepted, the problem remains of whether the relationship between mood state and cognitions is causal and if so, in which direction it operates. Obviously a causal relationship may also operate in both directions simultaneously, to form a ‘vicious circle’ in which each exacerbates the other. To establish whether there is a sense in which particular cognitions contribute causally to anxious mood, it would be necessary to find a method of manipulating the type or frequency of cognitions thought to be operating in this way.

One obvious possibility is that of ‘thought-stopping’: that is, patients could be taught to identify thoughts which are associated with anxiety and stop them in the usual way (Wolpe, 1973, p. 211) e.g. by' shouting stop, and substituting an alternative thought. The present study was planned as a pilot experiment to determine (i) if appropriate anxiety related cognitions could be elicited from a series of patients with generalised anxiety, (ii) if the reported frequency of such thoughts could be modified by a thought-stopping technique, and (iii) if any changes in thought frequency were associated with improvements in mood.

Clearly there are many ‘non-specific’ features involved in thought-stopping which could also have therapeutic effects on mood. For this reason it was necessary to include an alternative procedure, not directed at reducing thought frequency, but having the same degree of plausibility to patients, and preferably to therapists. The control procedure chosen for this purpose was modelled on desensitisation, in which patients were encouraged to allow the supposedly anxiety-provoking thoughts into their mind and tolerate them, rather than attempt to stop them. In summary, the study employed a relaxation training phase as a base-line, followed by a cross-over design in which the two treatment phases of thought-stopping and ‘cognitive desensitisation’ were given to each patient, in balanced order.     

Treatment of dental fears by imaginal flooding and rehearsal of coping behaviour

All combinations of high versus low arousal imaginal flooding, and coping versus no-coping imaginal rehearsal, were compared in the modification of dental fear. About one half of all subjects seen successfully completed dental treatment, although significant differences were found between groups in anxiety reduction before and during dental examination, which favoured the low arousal flooding groups. Coping rehearsal did not influence anxiety, but interacted with arousal level of flooding to determine subsequent dental attendance. The results suggest that flooding without coping rehearsal had little effect at high levels of arousal, but good results at low levels. Flooding with coping rehearsal on the other hand, had mixed results. At high arousal levels avoidance was reduced but not anxiety, while at low levels anxiety was reduced but not avoidance. The implications for further research on coping rehearsal are discussed.     

Dual-task interference as a function of cognitive processing load

Sixteen subjects from the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory participated in a dual-task study designed to measure processing requirements of a choice reaction time (RT) task. Two levels of choice RT stimulus-response (S-R)compatibility were tested with each of two tracking tasks to provide different levels of dual-task loading. In one tracking task, the target's temporal-spatial pattern was fixed; in the other, the target's path was a function of the subject's performance. In the choice RT task, compatibility was treated as a between-subjects factor, while the number of alternatives (set size) within a sequence was a within-subjects variable. Choice RT results indicated that compatibility and set size interacted; the increase in response latency as a function of set size was much greater when compatibility was low. An increase in choice RT response latency occurred when the secondary tracking task was added. Within a given compatibility level, this dual-task decrement was constant for all levels of set size; however, the magnitude of the dual-task decrement varied as a function of S-R compatibility, being greater when compatibility was low than when it was high. For these data, a model like Sternberg's (1969) stages model is seen to have more explanatory value than a pooled processing capacity model (e.g., Norman and Bobrow 1975).     

Development of depth perception mediated by motion parallax in unidimensional projections of rotation in depth.

Motion parallax is a composite of five transformations demonstrated to be effective in adult judgments of rotation direction in polar motion projections of a horizontal row of dots rotating in depth. The effectiveness of these transformations as a function of age was tested by presenting six such motion projections to first graders (age = 6 years), seventh graders (age = 13 years), and college students (age = 19 years). Identical age functions were obtained for judged rotation direction from the four motion projections representing (1) Velocity, corresponding to the traditional definition of motion parallax as differential velocity, (2) Velocity plus differences between ratios of instantaneous displacement to instantaneous acceleration for dots on the near and far sides of the rotation axis ($\text{D}\text{A}$ Difference), (3) Velocity, $\text{D}\text{A}$ Difference, and a gradient across the row of $\text{D}\text{A}$ ratios, and (4) all transformations. First graders, unable to use horizontal transformations, performed at chance on these four projections, while older students made correct judgments. Order, separated from Velocity for the first time, resulted in chance performance at all ages, while Direction, also separated from Velocity for the first time, resulted in veridical judgments in only 4 of 24 college students.     

Phallometric diagnosis with 'nonadmitters'

The phallometric method of assessing erotic value of presented stimuli has two main tasks, one is in the breaking down of complex (potentially) sexual stimuli into components, the other is in diagnosing anomalous erotic preferences in ‘Nonadmitters’, i.e. in persons whose behaviour would imply there is such an anomaly, but who deny its presence. Differentiation between Admitters and Nonadmitters was attained by two verbal Admitter scales. Comparison of the scores on these scales with results of phallometric assessment showed (by mutual validation) that the phallometric method diagnoses Admitters more accurately than Nonadmitters. After that, the validity was tested of a new mode of the phallometric method, designed for diagnosing pedo- or hebephilia in Nonadmitters. In cases of homosexual pedophilia or hebephilia (but not in the heterosexual cases) the new Nonadmitter mode was superior to the Standard procedure.